Holy Land Conflict: No Peace Among Wolves

At times, complicated issues are most clearly understood in simple terms. Speaking before the Knesset in 2006, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu captured, in two brief sentences, that which lies at the heart of the ongoing, centuries-old Arab-Israeli conflict: “The truth is that if Israel were to put down its arms, there would be no more Israel. If the Arabs were to put down their arms, there would be no more war.”

Indeed, how does one peacefully co-exist with those whose singular obsession is that one should not exist at all? Can a Jewish people who simply wish to live in peace ever do so while surrounded by those who view them as, in the words of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, “a cancerous tumor” – “the most detested people in all humanity” whose very nation must be “wiped out from the map?”

But according to the burgeoning worldwide Islamic caliphate, it’s not just Israel, the “Little Satan,” that must face annihilation. So too must America, the “Big Satan,” be destroyed: “And God willing, with the force of God behind it,” Ahmadinejad once promised, “we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism.”

A nuclear-armed Iran is perhaps months away. It is folly most grave to believe that this Islamic regime – a regime which holds that there can be no greater honor than to destroy both Israel and America via nuclear suicide bombings – won’t deploy such weaponry at the earliest possible opportunity.

“Free occupied Palestine!” they drone, while either disregarding the long history of deadly Arab aggression in the region, or laboring under obtuse ignorance of it.

By “occupied Palestine,” of course, Arabs and Arab sympathizers reference that portion of Israel achieved as spoils of her defensive “Six Day War.” In June of 1967, the tiny Jewish nation devastated the armies of neighboring Syria, Jordan and Egypt as the warring nations characteristically made ready to “wipe Israel from the map.”

By seizing the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the Old City of Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the West Bank of the Jordan River, Israel had gained a defensive stronghold in the region crucial to her very survival. Still, many of these territories remained very much occupied – and do to this day – by thousands of Arabs who now fall under Israeli governance.

Matt Barber is founder and editor-in chief of BarbWire.com. He is an author, columnist, cultural analyst and an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. Having retired as an undefeated heavyweight professional boxer, Matt has taken his fight from the ring to the culture war. (Follow Matt on Twitter: @jmattbarber).